It was with both shock and disappointment that I read your article about Coy Mathis, the 6-year-old transgender boy who will now be allowed to use the girls’ restroom at his elementary school. As a new father, I have to ask, when is enough enough? The fact that child protective services has not intervened on this poor child’s behalf is bad enough, but now every other 6-year-old child in that school has to be robbed of his or her innocence in the name of tolerance. I cannot believe that the LGBT agenda has become so aggressive and far-reaching as to now be affecting our elementary schools. Is it too much to ask that 6-year-olds simply be learning to read and write and not struggling with issues of sexual identity? We must draw the line somewhere.

Ross S. Pacini, M.D., Grand Junction

This letter was published in the June 25 edition.

For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here. Follow eLetters on Twitter to receive updates about new letters to the editor when they’re posted.

Who has been “robbed of their innocence”? The over the top hysterics from conservatives about this story is insane. The comment section on the DP article about this case was just vile.

Steve R

Really, I know you are a moron Tbag but are you stupid also? Who is robbed, how about all of the actual girls that now have to share a bathroom with a boy. Better yet how about every child in that school that now has to be taught about a topic that is years ahead of where they should be. As a parent of two incredible children around this same age, I say shame on those parents for using their own child as a prop for their agenda. This poor child would identify with a dog or cat if thats how he was raised, kids don’t naturally have tendencies towards male r female unless that is how they were raised.

Tbone

Ah Stevebag, so naive. Steve the naive. maybe someone can show us where in the story it says her classmates have an issue with sharing a bathroom?

Daughter Of Man

Yes, vile indeed, and the sad part about it is that it’s not just the Denver Post, but nationwide as I found out by reading the comments in such diverse newspapers as The Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New York Times, and Boston Globe.

There were four trends that were especially disturbing in all comments (including Dr. Pacini) and gave me pause:

1.) Sexualizing something that has nothing to do with sex. Gender and sexual orientation aren’t synonymous, and it’s pure ignorance to say they are.

2.) The obsession with equating transgenderism with child molestation or child abuse.

3.) The fascination with seeing genitalia in the bathroom, especially in a bathroom that is comprised of all stalls. Most of the world has unisex bathrooms and doesn’t see this point as a problem.

4.) The use of the term “gay agenda” and the willfulness of hanging on to a black/white worldview. I wish that people would realize that diversity is the key to survival because a conforming culture is more likely to be manipulated by governmental power (i.e. China).

The scary part about those four trends is that they are almost solely propagated by men as 95% of the comments in every newspaper were from men.

However, this point doesn’t come as a surprise because, as sociologist Shannon Wyss noted in her 2004 paper ‘Violence Against Gender Non-Conforming Youth’: “We in the USA live in a society that attempts to eradicate feminine characteristics in boys and men. As a result, genetic males who are gender non-conforming often face adverse consequences when expressing their femininity.”

Aaron Norton and Gregory Herek in their 2012 essay ‘Heterosexuals Attitudes Towards Transgender People: Findings from a National Probability Sample of U.S. Adults’ corroborate Ms. Wyss’ findings when they note, “To the extent that they perceive transgender identities as destabilizing to a binary conception of gender…some heterosexual men may perceive transgender people as especially threatening. Devaluing them may be a response to this threat.”

The United States has a thin veneer of tolerance and individual freedom, which is just a cover for rampant misogyny, bigotry, and prudish attitudes towards gender non-conformance and sexual orientation.

Ellen Wittlinger, in her novel Parrotfish makes a good point: “People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they’d resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world — even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren’t supposed to change?”

Common Sense

Here’s the sad part. If this same child came to his parents and said he was Napoleon (or in this case Josephine), they would get him help. But the politically correct response today is for the parents to sue the schools and delusional people like you to cheer them on while finding hatred and evil in reality.

Dano2

Common sense isn’t so common in some circles, clearly.

Best,

D

Daughter Of Man

Reality is that life is more than black or white, but myriad shades of grey. There are masculine women, feminine men, and everything in between. Humanity is a spectrum, which cannot easily be put into discernible boxes, which is what the Abrahamic religions try to do.

The anthropological, sociological, and psychological literature on stereotypical thinking is quite clear: people use stereotypes along with black and white thinking because it is easier to think in simplistic terms rather than abstraction. In other words, stereotypes are a lazy way to make sense of the vast complexities of the world that most people can’t make sense of.

Transgenderism can be found throughout history from ancient Egypt and Rome to present day Samoa, India, and Thailand. It is not new phenomena at all, it only seems like it.

I realize that not all people deal with abstraction well, nor do they deal with having their worldviews uprooted by new ideas. Perhaps things are happening as they are because things have become too rigid and too stagnant?

As Bertrand Russell once said, “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” Which is to say that it’s important to realize that much of what you accept as “reality” was once said to be deviant non-reality.

Tbone

Excellent posts, Daughter.

Daughter Of Man

Thanks to you too Tbone!

Tbone

Yea, let’s just make up a bunch of crap with no basis in reality to smear the parents. Great plan. Do you still beat your wife?

steelrod1

As the mother of a young daughter (I am assuming you have no children given that you seem to think that stalls existing in a bathroom will guarantee that this child will be well concealed during bathroom breaks), I will tell you that girls go to the bathroom to do more than use the facilities…many girls, my daughter included, use the restroom to change for afterschool activites…one of which is swimming. Now, assuming that none of the parents have discussed Coy’s differences with their children, and knowing that the girl’s bathroom is often utilized as more than a place to “go”…what do you expect the parents of these girls to tell their daughters about why Coy’s genetalia is diffrent from theirs in the event that she innocently changes in front of other female students in her efforts to “bejust like any other girl”? As a mom of a young daughter, I think it is my right to prolong the “birds and the bees” conversation as long as I feel it is necessary, and don’t appreciate the fact that it might be introduced by another child long before my child has the maturity to understand such things. You are naive to think this will not turn into a “sex” situation…and this is too young of an age. I like the fact htat at 7 my child is still innocent, and it is my right as a parent to keep her that way for as long as I see fit. And before you get off on some tangent about me being a “hater”…my ex is transgendered…we have a faculous relationship, and even HE stated that this was too young of an age, and he would equally be upset by our child having to share the bathroom with someone that is bioligically male. Has no one even thought about what is going to happen in middle school when PE class is over? Is Coy going to be allowed to shower with the other females? I understandit is important to make her feel comfortable, but to express that her comfort is more important than the other students is gross negligance by both the parents and the courts.

D.S.

And to you, you don’t think that homosexuals and transgender people have infiltrated the psychology community? There have been numerous articles on this happening and it is noted that homosexual psychologists and psychiatrists (most likely closeted) made it their agenda to promote homosexuality as non-deviant behavior back in the day. If anything, there has been an assault on masculinity. Why is it O.K. to have a 6 year old boy dress with young girls and it’s not O.K. to have a normal and aggressive 6 year old boy play “war” or any type of play involving guns on the playground?

There’s so much hypocrisy in America right now. Girls are allowed to be girls, boys can dress like girls, girls can dress like boys, but boys are not allowed to be boys (and play with toy guns) because their behavior is deemed too aggressive? By who? Female psychs and educators that more and more are dominating those fields? Society is a joke today.

peterpi

There should have been a way to resolve this, without resorting to the press.
I don’t know the issues, I don’t want to know, but throwing this whole thing to the media (see photo above) was bound to turn it into a hysterical (and I don’t mean funny) mess.
We’re talking a 6-year-old kid, not some transgender adult who was running into harassment and intolerance in the workplace.

BigD

It also seems that there is more to this. I searched (Googled) the mom’s name and there are some blogs that raise a few questions. Not sure of the validity, but makes one wonder if this doesn’t have more to do with her than the child.

BigD

It also seems that there is more to this. I searched (Googled) the mom’s name and there are some blogs that raise a few questions. Not sure of the validity, but makes one wonder if this doesn’t have more to do with her than the child.

BigD

It also seems that there is more to this. I searched (Googled) the mom’s name and there are some blogs that raise a few questions. Not sure of the validity, but makes one wonder if this doesn’t have more to do with her than the child.

confused

yes, i did too…did you see her blog where she was promoting her photography business…coy was pictured with his triplet siblings, as a boy, at the age of 3-1/2, yet the mother states in recent articles that Coy began identifying as female as early as 18 months. something does not add up with her story

Old_Enough

Most of us are lucky enough to have our self image and our equipment match up. I’m glad this kid gets to go into the bathroom where she feels comfortable.

peterpi

It may be more than just her equipment not matching up with her self-image. It could also be social constructs about dress, manner, deportment, interests in activities, etc.

Concerned Grandma

What about the rest of the children who don’t feel comfortable about a boy dressed as a girl using the girls bathroom??? How in the world would a child of this age even know about their sexuality? One sick messed up country!! Kudos to Dr. Pacini for speaking up for the rest of us so called HYSTERICAL conservatives. So everytime someone other then a liberal speaks up we are hysterical.

peterpi

There must have been solutions available, tolerable to both sides. It shouldn’t have taken a court case.
Some hysterical conservatives believe that everything would be all right if boys acted a certain way, and girls acted a certain way. Anyone outside of that norm, they want to call deviant or pervert. Well, not all boys and girls fit the mold.
I’m stereotyping, but some girls may dream of playing football or they really like the idea of construction work or being a fighter pilot. Some boys want to play dress-up, or wonder why they can’t wear pink, or would much rather walk a fashion runway than an airport runway or learn the uses of a omelet pan rather than a socket wrench.

Steve R

And what about the actual girls who feel uncomfortable having a boy in their restroom? Oh that’s right it is much more important to protect the rights of a gay child over others. Of course I didn’t use the word straight because kids don’t don’t understand that yet but they do know the difference between an actual girl compared to a boy that wants to be a girl.

peterpi

Nobody had a problem, until the school board butted in.
Kids pick up signals from adults. If the adults act uptight, so do the kids.
But keep pretending everything is black and white, no shades of grey.

Tbone

Exactly.

Dano2

It’s a wonder you can type at all with your knuckles so scraped up from dragging on the ground! Kudos for getting past the pain to voice “your” “views”!!!!!11one!

Best,

D

Dano2

As a new father, I have to ask, when is enough enough?

I know, right? Why can’t everyone be a white male , clean-shaven conservative who’ve never heard of a transgender?

Wake up people!

Best,

D

peterpi

I would change “be a” to “behave like a”

Steve R

Wake up to what? So now a father isn’t allowed to have an issue with his six year old daughter having to share a bathroom with a six year old boy? Gosh that father sure is misguided. What’s really sad Dbag is you are just like all the other liberal hacks and when someone doesn’t agree with your way if thinking you throw the race card. Nobody said anything about race, color or creed but rather about boys and girls sharing a restroom, which is wrong on every level. If it weren’t wrong there wouldn’t be separate bathrooms but go ahead throw the race card because everyone knows that a father shouldn’t have an issue with his daughter being stuck in a restroom with a boy. Pretty obvious that you aren’t fortunate enough to be a parent

Dano2

You’ve done an excellent job at enunciating for a particular ideology.

Please proceed.

Best,

D

guest

Another inane post by DTJ (see how kind I am to use the word you prefer).

Al

Next NFL game I attend in Denver, and the lines are too long for the men’s room, be on notice, at that moment I will discover I am really a female trapped in a mans body. Thank you lib courts.

peterpi

That’s odd: I think typically, the complaint is that lines are too long for the women’s restroom.

DR

Two things that AI might find amusing….

Back in 2005, I went with a friend to see the new Star Wars film “The Revenge of the Sith” at the Regal/Continental Theater on Hampden and 1-25. Anyway, as soon as the movie ended, like robots we exited the auditorium and the largely male audience, one by one marched into the restroom. As I was washing my hands I hear a voice yell out “WTF?” I look over and see young woman standing near the entrance with an extremely confused and disgusted look on her face. My first thought was that she inadvertently walked into the mens room. That thought quickly faded as I realized “Gee, there are an awful lot of stalls in here…and …no urinals?” I quickly exited the restroom and noticed a large group of women standing near the restroom entrance with a rather annoyed look on their faces wondering why we never bothered to notice the clearly marked sign that read… “Women”. Oops!!

The second thing…Al might enjoy traveling or living in South Korea. As I discovered while stationed there, many of the public restrooms there are unisex. It was not uncommon to be standing at a urinal, hear a toilet flush behind you and see a woman come walking out of the stall. It didn’t seem to bother us guys very much, but our fellow service women did not find it all that agreeable.

TomFromTheNews

What an idiotic, cavalier comment, Al.

peterpi

Agreed.

Dano2

I prefer ‘inane’ over idiotic personally, but idiotic is good too.

Best,

D

Robtf777

Odd.

We didn’t have this problem 50 years ago (or less)..

Of course, we didn’t have a problem with something called HIV/AIDS 50 years ago (or less).

And we also did not have a problem with there being 100 million cases of STDs in the US 50 years ago (or less)……nor with 20 million NEW CASES of STDs developing every year 50 years ago (or less).

The rampant “legalization” of Liberalized “free love” (which actually meant less about “love” and more about “sex”), the Liberalization of things that were known and understood to be “immoral” and “harmful,” and the constant continuation of our Liberal Society’s rejection of both God and God’s Truth………has actually caused the flourishing of “problems” that are becoming more and more “common” in our Growing Liberal Utopia…….but which has brought about nothing but more “confusion”…..more “suffering”……more “disease”……more “destruction”……and more “death”……as the consequences of Liberalized Sexual Immorality becomes more common and takes its growing toll on every generation that comes along.

But Liberals will NEVER admit that it is THEM and THEIR Ideology that has actually CAUSED the increase in the “problems” everyone can see around us.

They will ALWAYS blame…….anyone and everyone BUT them……for not allowing them to spend all the money that would be needed to find “cures” for something that would not even exist if NOT for Their Rejection Of God and God’s Ways.

Hint: The World can NOT have a STD problem…..including the HIV/AIDS problem……and the “confusion” about genders……unless The World and Enough People……violate God’s Truth about what is and is not sexually moral/immoral. The simple fact is that “we” DO….because “enough people”….DO.

Tbone

Ah, robt. We’ll pray for you. We’ll pray that god fills you with understanding and tolerance, rather than hatred and division.

TomFromTheNews

What Dr. (?) Pacini and other armchair experts on the blog don’t understand is that gender is only partly physical. This child has identified as female since she was 18 months old, never happy or comfortable when forced to identify as male. This isn’t just a “phase” of wanting to wear girls’ clothes; she KNOWS she is female and the parents finally accepted that and allowed her to be a girl.

I have followed the story since it was first reported and fully support the parents’ attempts to raise a happy, healthy female child who only wants to go to school with her friends and teachers (none of whom had any problem treating her as a girl before the school district unilaterally decided she had to start using the boy’s restroom, which would have been incredibly harmful to her healthy development).

This story is HUGE and I applaud the decision and look forward to how this will impact future cases of gender identity discrimination. If LGBT rights is the last frontier of the civil rights movement, the “T” part is the last frontier of that movement.

peterpi

MD would imply “Dr” as a title.
Thanks for the background info.
If the school administrators and the teachers were OK with it, I wonder if a bunch of uptight righties stuck their nose into it with the school board.

Steve R

Of course you don’t have a problem with this, as a liberal you have no issue exploiting children for your agenda…and children do not identify with a sex at 18 months old. Unless of course you buy into the same stereo types that you liberals are trying to get rid off. You clowns kill me with your attempt to rationalize your agenda…good thing the majority of people in this country have grown tired of your agenda.

peterpi

You can’t possibly believe half the stuff you’re saying.
Of course, kids pick up clues all the time about “boy” vs “girl”, going all the way back to pink is for girl, blue is for boy.
Nobody’s talking about sex but you.
The Denver Post can be skittish about hyperlinks, but do an Internet search for “intersexed children” or “babies born with indeterminate sex organs” or “people with three sex chromosomes instead of two” or “androgen insensitivity syndrome”. There are women who are women virtually in every sense of the term, but with XY chromosomes.
People’s gender can be far, far more variable than you want to believe.

TomFromTheNews

The only thing I have a problem with (aside from your caveman attitude) is harming a child. Forcing this little girl to behave and dress like a boy and use the wrong restroom for her would be abusive. There is no “agenda” apart from in your mind.

Look at the accompanying picture. You see that innocent little person on the grass? You see her on the street or in a park or in a classroom, and you don’t think that is a little girl?

The kids know Coy is a girl. Coy knows Coy is a girl. So do her parents. Leave her alone and let her get on with her life.

vospoenas

Conflating esoteric, contrived -gender- ideology with genuine -sexual- development anomalies like AIS, is enormously destructive, the very definition of a sick culture exploiting the ignorance naivety of an uninformed populace. If you’re doing this deliberately you’re beyond redemption, if it’s through ignorance at least you have a choice, you can choose to face reality and educate yourself or you can continue on your present path and number yourselves amongst the irredeemable

kelcy

Mr. Pacini is being disingenuous by using his MD title in his signature line. He is a doctor but he is a cardiologist and from the look of his picture ten to fifteen years out of medical school where he got a dabble in genetics and pediatrics, and probably none in sexuality. He is voicing nothing here but his personal opinion which is no doubt heavily weighted to his religious views. If he is that disturbed as to what his “children” might be exposed to in school I guess he better plan on home schooling them to keep them away from all those other nasty little kids and then get down on his knees and begin praying today that “his” child is normal in his eyes.

There is a whole story to Coy’s background and I say the parents are marvelous to be dealing with their child that was born to a somewhat male body but who is female inside. As for Coy using the girls/womens bathroom? So what. Women restrooms have stalls. There is no public use of the toilet. Beyond that these children have grown up with her and no doubt accept her as she is. Children are far, far, far smarter than adults at that age in so many ways. They only grow to be dirtbags (as in the sodomy case on the front page) based on exposure to their parents.

primafacie

He is going to be one mixed-up kid and adult some day, if he isn’t there already.

kelcy

No she won`t as I suspect the parents along with the doctors will wait until she has begun puberty to watch her hormones and adjust them accordingly and then when she is old enough to then do the gender reassignment surgery to make her outside match her inside. Remember she had a bit of both sexes at birth.

peterpi

Kelcy, you’re saying she is intersexed?
But the rightie tighties here insist there is no such thing. Every male is always and everywhere born unambiguously male, and every female is always and everywhere born unambiguously female, because God or Nature wouldn’t have it any other way, and because all these rightie tighties studied for decades in the fields of genetics, fetal development, endocrinology, child psychology, etc.

reinhold23

You left off one part…. born unambiguously gendered AND heterosexual.

peterpi

As the Goddess intended, LOL

TomFromTheNews

Yes, absolutely, kelcy. Having read up on her parents and the fact that she is going through this event so early, Coy is lucky in many ways. Most trans folks have to try to live as their birth gender well into adulthood and only come out as trans after many years of inner turmoil, including marriage, parenthood, etc. Coy can much more easily assimilate into adulthood as a female with the help of supportive parents and doctors and friends.

peterpi

Now, you’re the one reading minds, something you say you are loathe to do.
Also, I see your libertarian principles disintegrating.
Tom gave us a little background about this child. Aside from that, we don’t know what the issues are.

Not as long as they’re not exposed to people like you!
Even Exodus International shut down their “conversion therapy”.

“Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism,” said Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus. “For quite some time, we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.”
You could learn from them.

Tbone

Only if she listens to conservative bigots and religious nuts.

Dixie

I taught school and was also a special ed’ teacher’s assistant. Girls’ bathrooms have stalls. They do not use the bathroom in front of each other. There is no “loss of innocence.” This little girl, who was born with male equipment, has wonderful, supportive parents. The suicide rate for transgendered people who have no support at home is sky-high. The hateful prejudice against these people is based on fear. Let’s all get educated on the subject and end the stigma.

Fowler

Is it a solution for schools to now have three “types” of bathrooms: boys, girls and androgynous (or some other synonymous term? Kids can just pick whichever one suits them on any given day.

Dano2

I”l type slowly for you:

No.

Best,

D

Eli

Six year olds are stupid they can’t make decisions like this I’m pro lgbt but let the kid be a kid, his parents are ruining his life

M

The kid has barely been given the chance to drop a testicle, and they have taken them from him already. What kind of sick freaks are these parents?
Maybe they want him to be a great singer. The return of the castrati. How lovely a thing would that be?

The child can barely understand sexuality at all, and we’re tagging him/her a transgender.
I don’t have problems with adults or even young adults coming to these conclusions on their own. I do have problems with this situation. I know children are clever, but there is no way that this child’s ‘transgenderism’ is his own.

D.S.

I agree with the O.P. on this. We’ve gone over the edge as a society. I do believe people are gay, and that’s fine, I don’t give two damns whether a guy wants to get with a guy or a girl with a girl, but to go to the extent as to impress and force upon society the notion that a boy, with all of his equipment intact, is really a girl? Not to mention this boy is 6 years old for God’s sake. It sounds to me he made a crazy comment, as some 6 year olds do, and said to his mom that he wanted to dress like a girl. The idiot that she may be consented to this. Kids should not have to deal with sexual identity until they at least hit puberty.

I really think the world is becoming more and more insane. Despite what one “feels” inside, it is really just delusion that a person of one sex is trapped inside another. To me it reeks of a person not being able to accept that he or she is gay or exhibits deviant behavior so it’s easier to just say mentally that he or she is the opposite sex. America has become overly P.C. and “tolerant” to its detriment.

Most transgender people I knew were mental. My girlfriend’s father is currently trying to make the transition and he had abusive parents that told him when he was young that they wanted a girl and that they didn’t want a son. No freaking wonder that when he’s approaching death he wants to become a woman before he dies. From what I understand, my girlfriend that attended his L.G.B.T. meetings had told me that many people attending the meetings came from mentally and physically abusive households. Beginning to see a common thread here, people?

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